


To Hell With Why

by mercurybard



Category: Fringe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brown Betty AU, Community: au_bingo, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-26
Updated: 2010-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 09:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurybard/pseuds/mercurybard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As she'd told the matron, she didn't have much else to recommend her other than a deep well of patience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hell With Why

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my au_bingo card. Prompt-Film Noir. Set in the "Brown Betty" AU. Fringe ain't mine, and I make no claim.

At the sounds of struggle over the cell phone, Esther rushed out of her interview without more than "Sorry...I have to go--emergency!" to the matron. Oh well, it wasn't like she was going to get the job anyway. As she'd told the matron, she didn't have much else to recommend her other than a deep well of patience. Patience honed over the past fifteen months of working for O. Dunham, PI (no first name given on the door because--let's be honest--who would hire a female private investigator out of the phone book? Never mind that Olivia was one of the most talented detectives Esther had ever heard of and ran circles around the actual police and... Deep breaths, Esther. Now wasn't the time). Because while Olivia was a fantastic investigator, she wasn't the greatest human being. Too hung up on the lone wolf attitude.

She had no idea where Olivia was calling from when she was attacked, so she went back to the office, knowing that if Olivia got away (and she would), then she'd go there to lick her wounds. It wasn't like she had anywhere else--she slept on a fold-out couch in the back room.

Sure enough, Olivia was there when Esther let herself in using the spare key they kept in the fichus in the hallway. Someone had sliced her, right across the V of pale flesh exposed by the open collar of her man's dress shirt. Blood ran thick and glistening red down her chest, staining the shirt as well as the hankie she was using to try and mop it up.

"Oh, give that here," Esther ordered, holding out her hand.

Olivia gave her a critical look--searching her face for some clue as to why she'd come back, probably--and then handed over the handkerchief. "You came back."

"I'm not the sort of person who abandons her friends when they need her." The blood-soaked hankie went in the waste basket--Olivia had others and there'd be no getting it clean. Not with that much blood on it. Strange that the cut didn't look as bad now as it did when Esther had first walked in. Still, she took down the first aid kit she'd put together three weeks after taking the job as Dunham's secretary/assistant/keeper and pulled out the iodine. That cut required stitches, and Olivia was wretched sitting still for stitches. Not that she fidgeted--she was much too composed for fidgeting--but no matter how quickly Esther stitched her flesh together, she never worked fast enough for Olivia's tastes. The detective needed to keep moving to stay ahead of all the ghosts that trailed behind her. "Why don't you pour yourself a Scotch?"

"What happened to me not drinking anymore?" Dunham said with a small smirk as she reached into her desk and pulled out a half-empty green bottle.

Esther unwrapped the black thread she kept on-hand for just such occasions and threaded it through a needle. "Just because your father drank himself into an early grave, doesn't mean you need to go the same way. However, it will numb you while I stitch you up." That was a low blow, mentioning Dunham's father, but Olivia had fired her without provocation just yesterday. She dabbed iodine on a swatch of clean bandage. Gesturing to the desk, she ordered Olivia, "Sit."

Olivia obediently perched on the edge, one foot up on the chair beside it. The way she sat with her legs open would have been downright indecent in a skirt, but Dunham only wore trousers and men's shirts. Trench coat, fedora, underarm holsters--the model of the private investigator except that her hair fell in golden shoulder-length curls and bright red lipstick adorned her mouth. The late Oscar Dunham, former cop turned PI, had often bemoaned the fact that God had given him two girls instead of a son. Olivia had done her best to follow in her father's footsteps, though women weren't admitted to the police academy, but she'd hated him as much as she idolized him. Esther had long suspected the lipstick was a silent 'fuck you' to his memory.

With Dunham sitting down, they were on roughly the same level. "What did he cut you with?" Esther asked as she dabbed at the cut. She tried to touch Olivia's actual skin as little as possible, but she was still almost uncomfortably aware of the warmth rising from it. Of the bits of lace trimming the detective's brassiere. Instead, she focused on the wound. The edges of it were too uniform to have been made with a regular knife.

"Some kind of laser," Olivia replied.

Esther just shook her head. Technology had made so many inexplicable leaps in the past couple of years. Lasers, cell phones, computers....all impossible things. But they were living in an impossible age.

Olivia reached out, encircling Esther’s wrist with her long, slender fingers. “Why’d you come back?” she asked, her voice husky. Before, she had merely been making an observation; now, it was a question.

Esther swallowed. “You needed me.”

“I fired you.” Olivia’s hazel eyes were intent, boring into Esther’s when she dared to look up. Esther felt herself flush, the prickling warmth starting in her cheeks and rapidly spreading out to her limbs. Olivia leaned forward then and brushed her lips lightly across Esther’s. Gently but without hesitation—she wanted to make this move but was giving Esther the chance to run.

What Olivia couldn’t seem to get through her thick skull was that Esther wasn’t going to run…no matter how hard the detective pushed her away. Dropping the blood-stained handkerchief, Esther wrapped her hands around Olivia’s collar and hauled her off the desk and into a real kiss.


End file.
